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- Convenors:
-
Joy Hendry
(Oxford Brookes University)
Yuko Shioji (Hannan University)
- Location:
- Convention Hall A
- Start time:
- 16 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
A panel to discuss the proposition that anthropologists who work in each other's home territories are able to demonstrate a relatively equal form of scholarship that could provide a model for the future of a discipline that has suffered from accusations of superiority from others with whom we work
Long Abstract:
Anthropology has been criticised for various inequalities, but one important and continuing one is the inequality of the researcher collecting knowledge from the researched and using it for their own, albeit scholarly ends. Complaints about this were made in Japan back in the 19th century when the first society of anthropology was formed to monitor the researches of Edward Morse, and Tsuboi Shōgorō went to London for three years to study the subject. For some time, however, both British and Japanese anthropologists focused their attention on societies described as "primitive" or undeveloped, and the subject became associated with colonialism. More recently, however, the number of anthropological studies of Japan has increased, as have the anthropological studies of Europe. At the third (1987) meeting of the Japan Anthropology Workshop (presently about to celebrate its 30th anniversary) Professor Yoshida Teigo noted the advantage of bringing together anthropologists of and from Japan because of their complementary perspectives, and more recently, in 2011, I found myself fascinated by the reports of Japanese anthropologists working in Europe at a meeting at the Japanese National Museum of Ethnology, from its inception keen to treat all parts of the world equally. Joint research projects in Japan and Britain have also been very successful. The proposal here is that this kind of mutual exchange can benefit the discipline by offering a relatively equal and unbiased forum for building mutual understanding without the disadvantage associated with prior historical legacies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The project aimed at a comparative research of management culture in the UK and Japan, focusing on religion and museum in the UK. Japanese anthropologists from Japan and Japan anthropologists based in Oxford collaborated for mutual understanding of other culture and own culture, respectively.
Paper long abstract:
The research project was formed by Japanese anthropologists of administration and Japan anthropologists based in Oxford to compare management culture of UK and Japan, focusing on Religion and Museum from 2001 to 2003. A series of Inter-University Research Projects of Minpaku on the anthropology of administration which has begun in 1993 paved way to this research. It has focused on corporate museums and religious dimension of company culture such as corporate funeral and company shrine in Japan. Hirochika Nakamaki's stay in Oxford in 2000 was functional in preparing a joint research project with mutual collaboration.
The project was funded by JSPS and consisted of 7 Japanese scholars and 4 Japan anthropologists in Oxford. Europe-Japan Centre of Oxford Brookes University, with its director Joy Hendry, facilitated meeting rooms and accommodation. We visited several places together, including Cadbury's chocolate factory in Birmingham and Wedgwood Visitor Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. In addition, Nakamaki and William Kelly worked jointly on pottery and beer museums on the Trent River. Noriya Sumihara and Mitchell Sedgwick visited whisky museums together in Scotland. Yuko Shioji and Louella Matsunaga worked together for the publication of Japanese and English version of their papers.
A research report was published in both Japanese and English. Some papers reappeared in other commercial publications in Japanese and will be published in English. Complementary relation through collaboration worked very well in this project, studying other culture by Japanese anthropologists and own culture by Japan anthropologists, respectively, in the U.K.
Paper short abstract:
Based on my research in Berlin, I have highlighted the ways in which social relationships are initiated, expanded, and sustained in periods of tension. I want to explore the meaning of the social in Western thought.
Paper long abstract:
The emphasis on fragmentation, hybridization, and discontinuity in recent decades has brought the conception of society as a whole into question. Society has long been a totalizing concept in Western thought. By what means do people in contemporary conceive of their life-worlds with others?
In the course of my research in Berlin, I focused on the concept of "social," since it serves as a common ground for manifold and overlapping dimensions in life-worlds. This word is found at the core of welfare work in the realm of state policy and in the grassroots movements by self-help groups, while simultaneously referring to one's lifestyle at a personal level. People associate in their activities as tenants, as parents of nursery-school children, or as persons interested in vegetable gardening. They are inspired, or are expected to be inspired, by the sense of being social. The concept of social contributes to the establishment and promotion of relationships to others that are fragile and constantly under tension.
Highlighting the ways in which such relationships are initiated, expanded, and sustained under tension and further inquiring into what people want to have in common, I explore the meaning of the social in a contemporary context.
Paper short abstract:
My contribution will emphasise the influence of the native culture on studying other cultures and social systems.
Paper long abstract:
When I firstly arrived in Japan (1978) I had not any information in Spanish Language about Anthropology on Japan, neither translations from other countries researches were available in my own Language. That was an extra difficulty for me but, at the same time, I had to read everything I could in other languages, including Japanese, before having my direct experience and therefore I avoided looking at Japan from a strict "Spanish point of view". Nevertheless, I am Spanish and my own culture probably influenced both my method and my conclusions.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I will reflectively analise my anthropological practices in Spain to explore mutuality and its influences in anthropology, and also challenge to consider what the interaction among anthropologists of Europe and Japan can contribute to.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will reflectively analise my anthropological practices in Spain to explore the mutuality and its influences in Anthropology, and also challenge to consider what the interaction among anthropologists of Europe and Japan can contribute to.
In 20th century Spain has been for a long time one of the typical fields in Europe by British, American and French anthropologists. Since the latter half of 1970's, some anthropological methods and disciplines were introduced by first Spanish "anthropologists" who had studied abroad, and since then, Spanish culture have continued being studied by the natives. Now most of Spanish anthropologists realise their fieldwork within the country.
In this situation I began upon my anthropological fieldwork in Spain in 1990's, especially in Huesca, a small town in Aragon. From my point of view, there are different anthropologies in Spain based upon distinct Autonomous Communities; we find rather folkloric or ethnological studies about Aragon than anthropological one. I was obligated to study with anthropologists with different conception and my work would be placed in these academic circumstances.
I challenged to realise my fieldwork on a festival based upon urban anthropology which I had studied before. The urban anthropology in Japan has a particular character because of its main focus: urban festivals as a "pin hole" to consider the urban society. I tried then to introduce my own perspective as a Japanese anthropologist. In the discussions with Spanish anthropologists concerning my works, I noticed advantages and disadvantages as one from other (academic) culture.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents the author’s methodological difficulties and existential gain in fieldwork and research in England, and suggests a possibility of re- interpretation of the existed concept of social science as an example for promoting mutual understanding in contemporary anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
In my first 18-month fieldwork in the English countryside from 1996 to 1997, I found peculiar difficulties about what and why the people think of "ethnic" and "exotic". I was seen as an ethnic minority in an English country town and was often evaluated as the 'brave' ethnic person researching the culture of the majority in the society where the study of anthropology originated and trying to contribute to my own country. The English countryside has a lot of "incomers" who are middle class, well-educated and retired people from cities. But, since 1990s they are the majority of the people living there. Because of the clear admiration for the countryside in Britain, incomers were attracted to live in the countryside where there is a variety of natural and cultural heritage. As I was being gradually accepted and sometimes totally rejected as an "ethnic" person in the community, I came to have an idea which I can think in another way around. To analyze the formation of the English identity in relation to their management of heritage, I took off the existing framework of the concept of "ethnicity" which locates the whites in the centre to look at other people and which never looked at the whites as objectives of the concept. I applied the boundary theory of ethnicity theory for it. What we need for mutual anthropology is to re-interpret dominant concepts and find out a way of mutual understanding of the contemporary world.